Jazz and Pop, Youth and Middle Age like Young

S peed in music can be a form of abstraction. About fifteen or twenty
years ago the vibraphonist Milt Jackson, traveling as a single while
on temporary leave from the Modern Jazz Quartet, played an engagement at a Philadelphia neighborhood lounge, accompanied by a trio of
uninspired local musicians. Visibly unhappy, Jackson sleepwalked
through the first few numbers, sinking to the level of the house trio. To
make matters worse, a patron at the bar, who was either drunk or eager
to show the rest of us how down with bebop he was, acted as if Jackson
were taking requests.

The man wanted to hear a certain Charlie Parker tune. "How 'bout
some 'Scrapple from the Apple,' brother?" he whined before every number, disrupting the band's concentration as Jackson counted off tempos.

After enduring this several times, Jackson fixed the man with a contemptuous stare. Without a word of warning to his sidemen, he tossed off
the opening bars of "Scrapple from the Apple" at a tempo about twice as
fast as Parker's moderate gallop. Racing to keep up after joining him on
the bridge, the local musicians were soon playing way over their heads.
The tempo kept accelerating, with Jackson's hands and mallets disappearing into twin blurs. Small talk at the tables came to a stop, and there
was an extra split second of silence at the end, before we could bring our
hands together to applaud. It lasted just long enough for Jackson's final
note to echo gracefully, and for a familiar voice to plead, '''Scrapple from
the Apple,' huh, Milt. Do it for me?"

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